should be still further distorted; that any lingering doubt of the
justice of his late rebellion against the accepted order of things
should be banished by the persecutions of the bullying mate. It is easy
to postulate a storm-driven world when the personal horizon is dark and
lowering; easy, also, to justify the past by the present. From
theorizing never so resolutely upon the rights of man in the abstract to
robbing a bank is a broad step, and given an opportunity to reflect upon
it calmly after the fact, even such an imaginative enthusiast as
Griswold might have reconsidered. But the hasty plunge into the
underdepth of roustabout life was like the brine bath of the blacksmith
to heated steel; it served to temper him afresh.
Fortunately he was not altogether unequal to the physical test, severe
as it was. With all of his later privations, he had lived a clean life;
and his college training in athletics stood him in good stead.
Physically, as intellectually, the material in him was of the
fine-grained fibre in which quality counts for more than quantity.
Lacking something in mass, the lack was more than compensated by the
alertness and endurance which had made him at once the best man with the
foils and the safest oar in the boat in his college days. None the less,
the first night out of New Orleans, with its uncounted plantation
landings, had tried him keenly, and he was thankful when the second day
brought fewer stopping places and longer rest intervals.
It was in one of the resting intervals that he had been sent aft to
resecure the loosened tackle of the suspended small boat. He had come
upon Miss Farnham and her aunt unexpectedly, and so was off his guard.
But in any event, he argued, he should have obeyed the instinctive
impulse to excuse himself. He knew that the apology was a confession
that he was a masquerader in some sort, and he had felt the steady gaze
of the young woman's eyes while he was at work on the loosened tackle.
Later, when he passed her on his way forward he had seen the swift
change in her face betokening some sudden emotion, and the recollection
of it troubled him.
What if this clear-eyed young person had recognized him? He knew that
the New Orleans papers had come aboard; he had seen the folded copy of
the _Louisianian_ in the invalid's lap. Consequently, Miss Farnham knew
of the robbery, and the incidents were fresh in her mind. What would she
do if she had penetrated his disguise?
The query had its answer when he recalled his written estimate of her
character scribbled a few hours earlier by the light of the engine-room
incandescent. If her face were not merely a fair mask of the
conscientious probity it stood for, she would denounce him without
hesitation.
He tried to make himself doubt it, but the effort recoiled upon him.
Already, in his imaginings, she was beginning to assume the
characteristics of an ideal; and the ideal character with which he had
endowed her would be true to itself at any cost; it would be quite
sexless and just before it would be womanly and merciful. At least he
hoped it would. Ideals are much too precious to be shattered recklessly
by mere personal considerations; and he told himself, in a fine glow of
artistic self-effacement, that he should be sorry to purchase even so
great a boon as his liberty at the price of the broken ideal.
But the burning of sweet incense in the temple of the ideals is not
necessarily incompatible with a just regard for the commonplace
realities. In the aftermath of the fine artistic glow, Griswold found
himself straightway wrestling with the problem of present safety. If
Miss Farnham had recognized him, his chances of escape had suddenly
narrowed down to flight, immediate and speedy. He must leave the _Belle
Julie_ at the next landing and endeavor to make his way north by
wagon-road or rail, or by some later boat.
The emergency called for swift action, and his determination to leave
the steamer was taken at once. While he was weighing the manifest
dangers of a daylight desertion against the equally manifest hazard of
waiting for darkness, the whistle was blown for a landing and he
concluded not to wait. If Miss Farnham had identified him she would
doubtless lose no time in giving the alarm. She might even now be in
conference with the captain, he thought.
Griswold had a shock of genuine terror at this point in his reflections
and his skin prickled as at the touch of something loathsome. Up to that
moment he had suffered none of the pains of the hunted fugitive; but he
knew now that he had fairly entered the gates of the outlaw's inferno;
that however cunningly he might cast about to throw his pursuers off the
track, he would never again know what it was to be wholly free from the
terror of the arrow that flieth by day.
The force of the Scriptural simile came to him with startling emphasis,
bringing on a return of the prickling dismay. The stopping of the
paddle-wheels and the rattling clangor of the gang-plank winch aroused
him to action and he shook off the creeping numbness and ran aft to
rummage under the cargo on the engine-room guards for his precious
bundle. When his hand reached the place where it should have been, the
blood surged to his brain and set up a clamorous dinning in his ears
like the roaring of a cataract. The niche between the coffee sacks was
empty.
VIII
THE CHAIN-GANG
While Griswold was grappling afresh with the problem of escape, and
planning to desert the _Belle Julie_ at the next landing, Charlotte
Farnham was sitting behind the locked door of her state-room with a
writing pad on her knee over which for many minutes the suspended pen
merely hovered. She had fancied that her resolve, once fairly taken,
would not stumble over a simple matter of detail. But when she had tried
a dozen times to begin the letter to Mr. Galbraith, the simplicities
vanished and complexity stood in their room.
Try as she might to put the sham deck-hand into his proper place as an
impersonal unit of a class with which society is at war, he perversely
refused to surrender his individuality. At the end of every fresh effort
she was confronted by the inexorable summing-up: in a world of phantoms
there were only two real persons; a man who had sinned, and a woman who
was about to make him pay the penalty.
It was all very well to reason about it, and to say that he ought to be
made to pay the penalty; but that did not make it any less shocking that
she, Charlotte Farnham, should be the one to set the retributive
machinery in motion. Yet she knew she had the thing to do, and so, after
many ineffectual attempts, the letter was written and sealed and
addressed, and she went out to mail it at the clerk's office.
As it chanced, the engines of the steamer were slowing for a landing
when she latched her state-room door, and by the time she had walked the
length of the saloon the office was closed and the clerk had gone below
with his way-bills. It was an added hardship to have to wait, and she
knew well enough that delay would speedily reopen the entire vexed
question of responsibility. But there was nothing else to be done. She
told herself that she could not begin to breathe freely again until the
letter was out of her hands and safely beyond recall.
The doors giving upon the forward saloon-deck were open, and she heard
the harsh voice of the mate exploding in sharp commands as the steamer
lost way and edged slowly up to the river bank. A moment later she was
outside, leaning on the rail and looking down upon the crew grouped
about the inboard end of the uptilted landing-stage. He was there; the
man for whose destiny accident and the conventional sense of duty had
made her responsible; and as she looked she had a fleeting glimpse of
his face.
It was curiously haggard and woe-begone; so sorrowfully changed that for
an instant she almost doubted his identity. The sudden transformation
added fresh questionings, and she began to ask herself thoughtfully
what had brought it about. Had he recognized her and divined her
intention? But if that were the explanation, why had he not made his
escape? Why was he waiting for her to point him out to the officers of
the steamer?
The queries swept her out into a deeper sea of perplexity. What if he
were already repentant? In that event, the result of her dutiful service
to society would doubtless be to drive him back into impenitence and
despair. For a little time she clung desperately to her purpose,
hardening her heart and shutting her ears to the clamant appeal of the
reawakened sentiment of commiseration. Then the man turned slowly and
looked up at her as if the finger of her thought had touched him. There
was no sign of recognition in his eyes; and she constrained herself to
gaze down upon him coldly. But when the _Belle Julie's_ bow touched the
bank, and the waiting crew melted suddenly into a tenuous line of
burden-bearers, she fled through the deserted saloon to her state-room
and hid the fatal letter under the pillows in her berth.
Another hour had elapsed. It was nearly noon, and the stewards had
bridged the spaces in the row of square saloon-tables and were laying
the cloth for the mid-day meal. Charlotte opened her door guardedly, as
one fearing to face prying eyes, and finding the coast clear, slipped
out to rejoin her aunt under the awning abaft the paddle-box. Miss
Gilman shut her finger into the magazine to keep her place and looked up
in mild surprise.
"Where have you been?" she asked. "Has it taken you all this time to
write to the bank people?"
Charlotte's answer satisfied the strict letter of the inquiry, though it
slew the spirit.
"I wrote the letter quite awhile ago. I have been lying down, since."
The invalid reopened the magazine, and Charlotte was left to make peace
as best she might with her conscience for having told the half-truth. It
was characteristic of the inward monitor that even in such a trivial
matter it refused to be coerced. Accordingly, a little while afterward,
when Charlotte took her aunt's arm to lead her to the table, she said:
"I told you I had written to Mr. Galbraith, and so I have. But the
letter is not yet mailed." And, since the natural inference was that
there had been no opportunity to mail it, the conscientious little
confession went as wide of the mark as if it had never been made.
At the captain's end of the long table the talk rippled pointlessly
around the New Orleans bank robbery, and Miss Farnham took no part in it
until Captain Mayfield spoke of the reward of ten thousand dollars which
had been offered for the apprehension of the robber. The fact touched
her upon the ethical side, and she said:
"That is something that always seems so dreadfully barbarous; to set a
money price on the head of a human being."
The captain laughed.
"'Tis sort o' Middle-Aged, when you come to think of it. But it does the
police business oftener than anything else, I guess. A detective will
work mighty hard nowadays for ten thousand dollars."
"Yes, I suppose so; but it is barbarous," Charlotte persisted. "It is an
open appeal to the lowest motive in human nature--cupidity."
The bluff riverman nodded a qualified approval, but a loquacious little
gentleman across the table felt called upon to protest.
"But, my dear Miss Farnham, would you have us all turn thief-catchers
for the mere honor of the thing?"
"For the love of justice, or not at all, I should say," was the
straightforward return blow. "If I should see somebody picking your
pocket, ought I to weigh the chances of your offering a reward before
telling you of it?"
"Oh, no; of course not. But this is entirely different. A rich
corporation has been robbed, and it says to the thief-catchers--and to
everybody, for that matter--Here are ten thousand dollars if you will
find us the robber. For myself, I confess that the reward would be the
determining factor. If I knew where Mr. Galbraith's 'hold-up' is to be
found, I should certainly go out of my way to earn the money."
Miss Farnham's sense of the fitness of things was plainly affronted.
"Do you mean to say that you would accept the reward, Mr. Latrobe?"
"Most certainly I should; any one would."
The frank avowal stood for public opinion. Charlotte knew it and went
dumb in the presence of a new and more terrible phase of her
entanglement. She might call the reward blood money, and refuse
absolutely to touch it, but who, outside of her own little circle, would
know or believe that she had refused? And if all the remainder of the
world knew and should exonerate her, would not the wretched man himself
always believe that she had sold him for a price?
The benumbing thought left her tongue-tied and miserable; and after the
table-dispersal she sought out the captain to ask a question.
"Do you know the law in Louisiana, Captain Mayfield?" she began, with
more embarrassment than the simple inquiry would account for. "This man
who robbed the Bayou State Security yesterday; what is the penalty for
his crime?"
The captain shook his head. "I don't know: being only a riverman, I'm
not even a sea-lawyer. But maybe Mr. Latrobe could tell you. _Oh_, Mr.
Latrobe!"
The loquacious one was on his way forward to smoke, but he turned and
came back at the captain's call.
"The penalty?" he said, when the query had been repeated to him; "that
would depend upon a good many things that could only be brought out at
the trial. But under the circumstances--threatening to shoot the
president, and all that, you know--I should say it would go pretty hard
with him. He'll probably get the full limit of the law."
"And that is?" persisted Charlotte, determined to know the worst.
"In Louisiana, twenty years, I believe."
"Thank you; that is what I wished to find out."
The little man bowed and went his way; and Captain Mayfield, who was an
observant man in the field of river stages and other natural phenomena,
but not otherwise, did not remark Miss Farnham's sigh which was more
than half a sob.
"Twenty years!" she shuddered; "it might as well be for life. He would
be nearly fifty years old, if he lived through it."
It did not occur to the captain to wonder how Miss Farnham came to know
anything about the bank robber's age, but he spoke to the conditional
phrase in her comment.
"Yes; if he lives through it: that's a mighty big 'if' down here in the
levee country. Twenty years of the chain-gang would be about the same as
a life sentence to most white men, I judge."
Charlotte turned away quickly; and when she could trust herself in the
presence of her aunt, she led the way back to the shade of the
after-deck awning and tried, for her own sake, to talk about some of the
many things that had gone to make up the sum of their daily life before
this black cloud of perplexity had settled down. It was a dismaying
failure; and when the invalid said she would go and lie down for awhile,
Charlotte was thankful and went once more to lock herself and her
trouble in her state-room.
That evening, after dinner, she went forward with some of the other
passengers to the railed promenade which was the common evening
rendezvous. The _Belle Julie_ had tied up at a small town on the western
bank of the great river, and the ant procession of roustabouts was in
motion, going laden up the swing-stage and returning empty by the
foot-plank. Left to herself for a moment, Charlotte faced the rail and
again sought to single out the man whose fate she must decide.
She distinguished him presently; a grimy, perspiring unit in the crew,
tramping back and forth mechanically, staggering under the heaviest
loads, and staring stonily at the back of his file leader in the endless
round; a picture of misery and despair, Charlotte thought, and she was
turning away with the dangerous rebellion against the conventions
swelling again in her heart when Captain Mayfield joined her.
"I just wanted to show you," he said; and he pointed out a gang of men
repairing a slip in the levee embankment below the town landing. It was
a squad of prisoners in chains. The figures of the convicts were struck
out sharply against the dark background of undergrowth, and the
reflection of the sunset glow on the river lighted up their sullen faces
and burnished the use-worn links in their leg-fetters.
"The chain-gang;" said the captain, briefly. "That's about where the
fellow that robbed the Bayou State Security will bring up, if they catch
him. He'll have to be mighty tough and well-seasoned if he lives to
worry through twenty years of that, don't you think?"
But Miss Farnham could not answer; and even the unobservant captain of
river boats saw that she was moved and was sorry he had spoken.
IX
THE MIDDLE WATCH
In any path of performance there is but one step which is irrevocable,
namely, the final one, and in Charlotte Farnham's besetment this step
was the mailing of the letter to Mr. Galbraith. Many times during the
evening she wrought herself up to the plunging point, only to recoil on
the very brink; and when at length she gave up the struggle and went to
bed, the sealed letter was still under her pillow.
Now it is a well-accepted truism that an exasperated sense of duty, like
remorse and grief, fights best in the night-watches. It was of no avail
to protest that her intention was still unshaken. Conscience urged that
delay was little less culpable than refusal, since every hour gave the
criminal an added chance of escape. The logic was unanswerable, and
trembling lest the implacable inward monitor should presently insist
upon the immediate revealment of the fugitive's identity to Captain
Mayfield, she got up and dressed hurriedly, meaning to end the agony
once for all by giving the letter to the night clerk.
But once again the chapter of accidents intervened. While she was
unbolting her door, the mellow roar of the whistle and the jangling of
the engine-room bells warned her that the _Belle Julie_ was approaching
a landing. Remembering the cause of her earliest failure, she ran
quickly to the office, only to find it deserted and the door locked.
This time, however, she determined not to be diverted. Going back to the
state-room for a wrap she returned to wait for the clerk's reappearance.
This final pause soon proved to be the severest trial of all. The
minutes dragged leaden-winged; and to sit quietly in the silence and
solitude of the great saloon became a nerve-racking impossibility. When
it went past endurance, she rose and stepped out upon the
promenade-deck.
The electric search-light eye on the hurricane-deck was just over her
head, and its great white cone seemed to hiss as it poured its dazzling
flood of fictitious noonday upon the shelving river bank and the
sleeping hamlet beyond. The furnace doors were open, and the red glare
of the fires quickened the darkness under the beam of the electric into
lurid life. Out of the dusky underglow came the freight-carriers, giving
birth to a file of grotesque shadow monsters as they swung up the plank
into the field of the search-light.
The stopping-place was an unimportant one, and a few minutes sufficed
for the unloading of the small consignment of freight. The mate had left
his outlook upon the hurricane-deck and was down among the men,
hastening them with harsh commands and epithets which owed their
mildness to the presence of the silent onlooker beneath the electric.
The foot-plank had been drawn in, the steam winch was clattering, and
the landing-stage had begun to come aboard, when the two men whose duty
it was to cast off ran out on the tilting stage and dropped from its
shore end. One of them fell clumsily, tried to rise, and sank back into
the shadow; but the other scrambled up the steep bank and loosened the
half-hitches in the wet hawser. With the slackening of the line the
steamer began to move out into the stream, and the man at the
mooring-post looked around to see what had become of his companion.
"Get a move on youse!" bellowed the mate; but instead of obeying, the
man ran back and went on his knees beside the huddled figure in the
shadow.
At this point the watcher on the promenade-deck began vaguely to
understand that the first man was disabled in some way, and that the
other was trying to lift him. While she looked, the engine-room bells
jangled and the wheels began to turn. The mate forgot her and swore out
of a full heart.
She put her fingers in her ears to shut out the clamor of abusive
profanity; but the man on the bank paid no attention to the richly
emphasized command to come aboard. Instead, he ran swiftly to the
mooring-post, took a double turn of the trailing hawser around it and
stood by until the straining line snubbed the steamer's bow to the
shore. Then, deftly casting off again, he darted back to the disabled
man, hoisted him bodily to the high guard, and clambered aboard
himself, all this while M'Grath was brushing the impeding crew aside to
get at him.
Charlotte saw every move of the quick-witted salvage in the doing, and
wanted to cry out in sheer enthusiasm when it was done. Then, in the
light from the furnace doors, she saw the face of the chief actor: it
was the face of the man with the stubble beard.
The night was summer warm, but she shrank back and shivered as if a cold
wind had breathed upon her. Why must he make it still harder for her by
posing as the defender of the wretched negro? She would look on no
longer; she would.... The harsh voice of the mate, dominating the noise
of the machinery and the churning of the paddle-wheels, drew her
irresistibly to the rail. She could not hear what M'Grath was saying,
but she could read hot wrath in his gestures, and in the way the men
fell back out of his reach. All but one: the stubble-bearded white man
was facing him fearlessly, and he appeared to be trying to explain.
Griswold was trying to explain, but the bullying first officer would not
let him. It was a small matter: with the money gone, and the probability
that capture and arrest were deferred only from landing to landing, a
little abuse, more or less, counted as nothing. But he was grimly
determined to keep M'Grath from laying violent hands upon the negro who
had twisted his ankle in jumping from the uptilted landing-stage.
"No; this is one time when you don't skin anybody alive!" he retorted,
when a break in the stream of abuse gave him a chance. "You let the man
alone. He couldn't help it. Do you suppose he sprained an ankle
purposely to give you a chance to curse him out?"
The mate's reply was a brutal kick at the crippled negro. Griswold came
closer.
"Don't try that again!" he warned, angrily. "If you've got to take it
out on somebody, I'm your man."
This was mutiny, and M'Grath's remedy for that distemper was ever
heroic. In a flash his big fist shot out and the crew looked to see its
lighter champion go backward into the river at the impact. But the blow
did not land. Griswold saw it coming and swerved the necessary
body-breadth. The result was a demonstration of a simple theorem in
dynamics. M'Grath reeled under the impetus of his own unresisted effort,
stumbled forward against the low edge-line bulwark, clawed wildly at the
fickle air and dropped overboard like a stone.
At the splashing plunge Griswold saw, planned, and acted in the same
instant. The _Belle Julie_ was forging ahead at full speed, and if the
mate did not drown at once, the projecting paddle-wheel would batter the
life out of him as he passed under it.
Clearing the intervening obstacles in a hurdler's leap, Griswold raced
aft on the outer edge of the guards and jumped overboard in time to
grapple the drowning man when he was within a few feet of the churning
wheel. The struggle was short but fierce. Griswold got a strangling arm
around the big man's neck and strove to sink with him so that the wheel
might pass over them. He was only partly successful. The mate was
terror-crazed and fought blindly. There was no time for trick or
stratagem, and when the thunder of the wheel roared overhead, Griswold
felt the jar of a blow and the mate's struggles ceased abruptly. A
gasping moment later the worst was over and the rescuer had his head
out; was swimming gallantly in the wake of the steamer, supporting the
unconscious M'Grath and shouting lustily for help.